YANKEES TALK ABOUT INNINGS LIMITS WITH NASTY NESTOR & I'M GONNA LOSE MY MIND!

There's a fine line between "protecting" a player and coddling him....and I don't think the Yankees know the difference. Even if they do know the difference, I worry that they will still screw it up.

And that's a real possibility when it comes to Nestor Cortes, read more HERE. We are heading into June, and there are already headlines about innings limits. The Yankees are going to come up with some crazy science experiment to make sure Cortes still pitches enough to help the team get to the playoffs without overworking him before they get there.

That's where Matt Blake comes in....and some more Yankees analytics. Because we all know how much the Yankees love to throw analytics into everything, and Blake is already babbling about it.

"The historical way to do it was just to look at innings totals and go up 20 or 30 percent," pitching coach Matt Blake said. "That’s not fair to guys because all innings come in different ways with pitch counts and stress. You can look at their body, performance in the weight room and training numbers and then track that as the year goes on," Blake said. "You add subjective and qualitative feedback from the players, who can tell us how they’re feeling physically and mentally and see if there are any trends positive or negative."

The historical way has been used for a long time. Teams have analyzed strengths and weaknesses throughout spring training and made adjustments throughout the regular season as needed. But what about when you have a short spring training and a pitcher that hasn't pitched more than 119 professional innings?

It's the perfect storm for a lot of shenanigans yet to come. I'm calling it now. Cortes is the real deal, we can see it. Is he going to pitch 200+ innings? Probably not due to a bunch of factors....but I don't like the idea of Blake and Aaron Boone already talking about this. We've seen the Yankees experiments go wrong already. Deivi Garcia is the most recent experiment....and what about Joba Chamberlain back in the day?

Do we want Cortes to pitch to the point of dead arm? Of course not, but the Yankees have proven they don't know how to identify or prevent that either. Just let him pitch! The league will eventually get more intel and make some adjustments to try and be more successful against him. It's a natural part of the game. He wants to pitch and help his team, let him do it! He's not a flame thrower, the 100+ mph fastball isn't in the equation here. There's a difference between playing smart and conditioning properly and a science experiment.....but the Yankees can't identify this.

The Yankees better think long and hard about shutting Cortes down early....it didn't help Stephen Strasburg or the Nationals back in 2012. There's no reason to think it will help us either. Stop the coddling or knee jerk reactions and let the man pitch using logic!

--Jeana Bellezza-Ochoa

BYB Senior Managing Editor

Twitter: @nyprincessj